adventures « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

adventures

Ironman Indiana

This weekend we were in beautiful, bucolic Selma, Indiana, a rural community just outside exotic Muncie, which is in Indiana. And so it was that they named the event Ironman Indiana. It’s a bit of a one-off from the Ironman company. A lot of races were shut down last year. A lot of events didn’t get the chance to make money; a lot of outstanding athletes didn’t get to do their thing. So, this year, they decided “Let’s run a half Ironman and a full Ironman on the same day in the middle of a pandemic!”

We drove up Friday evening, because The Yankee was in this race. She did her packet pickup in Muncie, indoors but there was no one around. We went to the hotel(s) — and more on that in a moment. Saturday morning she got up very early and started the race.

Here she is after the 2.4 mile swim, and the conclusion of her 112 mile bike ride. Still a great big smile …

This is just outside the transition area, so she’s slowed down enough to allow us a glimpse as she’s preparing for the run.

Again, a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile run, and then you wrap up a light day’s work with a 26.2 mile run, which she’s starting here.

At some point on the run it becomes a mental thing as much as a physical thing. You’ve been out there for hours. You’ve surpassed your longest workouts. It can be tedious or boring or painful or entertaining. And as this course was a series of out-and-backs, you only saw your personal cheering sections a few times. But at least the weather was nice and mild today, and downright cool after the last of the rain had passed through. Really, it was a bit of everything, and so much of this particular course is in such a delightfully rural area that the only people you would see for long stretches of time are other athletes and the occasional aid station. You spend a lot of time in your head. A lot of time.

And yet, having done half the run, 13.1 miles down and 13.1 to go, she’s still got that big smile.

Later in the evening, having slashed through the water and ground on the pedals and pounded the pavement, the finish line.

This is her third Ironman. First there was Ironman Louisville in 2017. Then there was the North American Championship in Texas in 2019. And now, Ironman Indiana.

She finished, got her medal, took the publicity photos, grabbed a roast beef sandwich and sat on a bench to collect herself with her coach and his wife. And then we carried all of the tools of the Ironman trade to the car. Then she shivered as we drove back to the hotel.

We had two hotels this weekend. The first place had to put some rooms out of order, which we’re guessing, means they overbooked. But they were nice enough to reserve us a room in a much less nice hotel across town.

The sign out front inspires a lot of confidence.

But! We got a room with a king size bed, better than we were expecting in the first hotel. This place was undergoing renovations, however, and smelled funny. It probably always smells funny.

It was a smell that was even weirder through your mask.

So we settled in there Friday. On Saturday, the desk manager says to me “Checkout is at 11.”

“No sir, it is not. The other hotel booked us for two nights.”

He had our little note from the other hotel right there on the desk. He was waiting on me.

“It says here one night.”

“Yes it does,” I said. “And the attendant there assured me this was a typo on a form letter and that our visit with you was for two nights.”

“OK, let me call them.”

“Yes, please do call them. Call Chris, the manager. Call Chris at home.

He calls, asks for Chris. Chris isn’t there, because it is Saturday on one of the busiest weekends in their town. Why would the manager of a teaching hotel be on hand?

He asks for whoever was close by. He gets put on hold.

Then the desk manager gentleman turns to me and nicely says “I know this isn’t your fault.”

I said, “And I know this isn’t your fault. I also know I have two nights with you.”

At which point he hangs up and says “They were taking too long. I’m going to make them pay for it anyway.”

Which is where I say, “And when I come back tonight, my stuff is still going to be in the room, and not on the curb, and this key is going to still work, right?”

Which is a question I asked him two different ways, just to be sure we had an understanding. And we did.

You put that out of your head for the day, but after the triathlon it’s a half-hour ride back to the hotel and you’re wondering the whole way: Is our stuff still going to be in the room? Is this key still going to work? It’ll be a whole new shift of people working in the hotel this time of night. What if Robert didn’t pass along this information, and we’re tired and hungry and cold and it’s late and we’re also sweaty? No one wants a scene in their smelly, renovating hotel, in front of people putting “cigerettes” out in the flower pots.

But the key worked, our things were still in the room. The three-time Ironman had a nice soothing shower and a snack and I said, “Since we’re safely in the room I can tell you this story now … ” which she laughed at until she fell asleep.

And on Sunday, we left exotic Muncie, got a quick breakfast and drove back to Bloomington. Sunday was a low key day spent resting and cleaning. Today was a Monday; tomorrow will be a full Tuesday.

adventures / Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off
24
Sep 21

A full fall Friday

First thing this morning it was into the studio. The morning show folks were under the lights this morning. I saw part of their production, but had to duck in and out for other things. There was a special alumni presenting to students today, so I had to do a bit to help with that.

And then there was a student who needed to interview someone in a podcast studio. That required giving a crash course in the equipment. (I saw her later. She said it all went great.) Then back to the guest speaker. And then another podcast tutorial.

After which I was able to sneak in a quick sandwich at my desk. And then the actual speaking event took place. After which I was able to catch up on Email.

And after that there was another podcasting tutorial.

One of the emails I fielded today was also about teaching people how to podcast.

Perhaps I should add that as an additional title.

(At least I had a nice matching blue theme today, no?)

After work it was to the house, and then immediately out to the lake to watch my lovely bride do one of her last Ironman workouts.

I also walked through the woods by the lake shore.

And I studied some of the flowering weeds.

And that sums up Friday, and most every day.

It’s the weekend. Supply your own allusion. And enjoy your weekend!

adventures / errands / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Aug 21

My second plumbing project of the year

I got my socks wet this morning. There’s not much worse than that, but one thing worse than wet socks is not knowing the provenance of the water now in your socks.

I assumed it was a shower dripping scenario. Safe bet, considering where my socks got wet. Sometimes you’re too enthusiastic to meet the day and water winds up not in the towel, but on the tile floor. That was not the case, because that would be an easy fix and not really worth discussing here after the obvious notation of the unpleasant nature of wet socks.

No, it was more than that. We have a plumbing problem. (For the first one of the year, a simple and yet long-running kitchen odyssey that I finally whipped in April, go here.) Precisely the sort of thing you want to discover just in time to leave for the office.

It seems that the seal at the base of the toilet has failed. So turn off the water supply, empty the basin, dry the floor and deal with it later. Also, this is a good time to replace the lid, which earlier this week started giving signs of failing as well.

It’s not an old house, but it’s nice when things go in concert, I guess.

I immediately envisioned this as a two-evening process, because who has the energy to correct all of this in one brief evening after a day of work and a trip to a hardware store and so on.

The day at work was pleasant, until late in the afternoon when I remembered this new chore I had awaiting me at the house. I visited the local small hardware store, between campus and domicile, for something called penetrating oil. I’d noticed that the bolts holding the lid in place were fused solid and something must be done about that.

This is peculiar hardware. It’s designed to be unobtrusive and installed once. No thought of that design is given to removal. That’s only going to happen once, after all. It seats almost flush, so the head isn’t large enough to offer real purchase. There is no drive, where your screwdriver tip goes, to control a counter-spin. (I just looked up that term, drive. I’ll use it incessantly now.) So it won’t be a painless removal. It won’t be pretty. Most importantly, it won’t be done by the person that installed them.

The directions on the penetration oil, by the way …

You can see why I bought this brand.

I did all of that, and in the “wait a while” portion I decided to re-fill the tank — something my lovely bride said made me hope that it was actually an easier problem to solve — to test our theory about the wax seal. Turns out the leak is from the underside of the tank. There are three contact points on the tank, one where the water moves and two bolt holes on either side. The water is coming from one of those bolt holes, I think. So I remove the tank cover. Inside, the non-suspect bolt on the left looks a bit worse for wear, some sharp rusted points, but fine. The one on the right, is my likely culprit. I reached into the tank to touch it and it exploded. I wish I had a camera on it. It looked like this:

That’s a hardware failure. Good news, maybe it’s not the wax seal. Bad news, now I have all of this to clean up the mess and fix the problem.

So I dried and cleaned and removed the tank from the base and wondered exactly how the head of a brass bolt simply disintegrates on contact. What’s in the water that can do that? And, in light of that, should I be considered about our many other standard water uses?

To the seat, then, with it’s peculiar one-use hardware that was, it turns out, totally unfazed by the penetrating oil. Ultimately we wound up snapping the hinge points and working a hacksaw through the bolts. (When you’re working a hacksaw through rust and steel it is important to remain patient, especially if you’re doing this in close proximity to porcelain you don’t want to mar.)

After that I went to the second hardware store of the day. The mission: a new seat and lid, and some new hardware to replace the bolts and washers that had failed in the tank.

Saw that bit of the sunset on the way there. Had a very kind young man help me find the parts I needed, and then returned to finish this job. Because, by now, I did not want this to be a two-evening experience. Get all of your wedged-in-a-tight-space-working-at-awkward-angles humility in one afternoon, I always say.

Bolt the tank to the base. Return the water supply, notice the leaks, turn off the water supply. Dry the wet floor again, tighten the bolts to create a proper seal. (Do not over-tighten around ceramic.) And then install the new seat and lid.

None of this takes any real time if you are working with good materials. We’re talking about four bolts and nuts here. But if home repair was easy, anyone could do it, right? After all of the this, and cleaning up and returning the tools to their proper home and so on, it was about about a five-hour project.

But I saw that sunset.

And I purchased replacement hacksaw blades. And, finally, I bought some standard wrenches. I’ve always gotten by with a metric set and crescent wrenches but this evening, wedged between a wall and the plumbing fixtures I finally just thought, ‘You know what? Buy a set with a 7/16 in it like everyone else does and get on with your chores.”

And, tonight, I will rest happily in the knowledge that there are no more leaks. And that the next time that lid gets replaced, maybe it won’t be by me.

adventures / books / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Aug 21

Shoo, fly

My lovely bride — who is as strong as they come and smarter than she realizes — and I have a joke in our house. Whenever there is an insect she asks me to handle the situation.

We all have things we don’t want to do, so this is fine. I say, make sure people you spend your time with have complimentary tastes and services. Not everyone should be scared of, say, clowns, to the point of immobility. Someone present should be able to handle the situation.

But that’s not really what this is. She lets me address the insect and that lets me let the critter outside, or meet it’s untimely fate, and then we make a joke about how I saved her life. From the millipede, or whatever we are dealing with.

Well, today was no millipede. And after I’d returned from a long and fruitful day at the office we were chatting as people do and in the middle of the conversation she says, “Oh, I need a very thin piece of cardboard.” I produce something from the recycling stack in the garage and ask her why. “I trapped the world’s largest house fly under a plastic bowl and you need to slide the cardboard under it to carry it outside.”

OK, not a problem. Paperboard, bowl, we’ve all been there. The flooring that the insect was on was dark, so I couldn’t see it properly until I got outside to notice we had trapped and were releasing a female Tabanus atratus.

Look at that scissoring mouth! And why are we finding horseflies indoors?

She flew off to do horsefly things. We sat outside, for some reason, and I was thinking about how they use their six piercing mouth parts and — this part is unnecessarily gross, apologies — the sponge-like labrum used to lap up blood.

Horseflies don’t often bite people. But you don’t want to be bitten by a horsefly.

Back to my evening reading selection. I’m about to wrap this up.

It’s been a fine read. Again, it’s like an in-depth Wikipedia entry on a given subject from the period. Most of the chapters are about 20-something pages. It’s a great overview. And I have found things in Lord’s book that will prompt me to look for more thorough accounts, but other subjects I’ve read the 20 or 30 pages and felt like I had enough for now.

What was fun this evening was reading a bit about this particular moment in the American culture … through the lens of a 1960s writer.

Riding bikes! Swimming! Smoking! Pants! You knew how that had evolved, but it’s a treat to see little anecdotes like that which help to spell out how it could be liberating and befuddling. It all really stands out, 110 years-and-more later, of course, but just imagine being in the moment. Or consider that the next time something is different compared to the things to which you’ve long been accustomed. Makes you wonder what the social mores will be like in another five generations.

adventures / friends / Monday / photo — Comments Off
16
Aug 21

Set a record for interpersonal interactions this weekend

Saturday we had a video chat with some friends. Two of them were supposed to be getting on a cruise ship for their anniversary, a trip they’d postponed last year, but there was a small snag in their plans. Now they will cruise next week. And that’s just the way of the world now, right? You didn’t get precisely what you wanted when you wanted, but there might be the opportunity to do it literally next week, with a bit less hassle than you’d imagine for that sort of thing, pre-Covid.

This is a part of the business model that I endorse. Maybe this level of customer service and good faith acting is something that consumers will see fit to reward when it comes to the bottom line. It’d be nice if that was a certain kindness that sticks around long after all of this is gone, if all of this ever goes away.

Remember, we used to live in a world where doctors or hair dressers would fire you if you had to cancel too many appointments. That airlines and cruise lines and whomever else are now acknowledging that stuff happens is a good thing. We can assign fault later, assigning fault is easy. Get me on the next trip to enjoy your goods and services and we can each call this a pleasant transaction.

Sunday evening we had a visit with some work friends. It didn’t go quite as we’d planned, but we’ve only been trying to do this since the pandemic began or so, so you roll with it and hope for the best.

So there we were, an advertiser, a comm scholar, a political scientist and us, all trying to be smart and funny at the same time. All thoroughly likable people, all full of giggles. It was a nice visit and we somehow managed to do it just before classes start next week and everything turns upside.

Turning upside down being a question of going from summer mode to the fall plan, and not a cynical Covid distinction. Who knows what that will bear out. Play it smart, hope for the best and thank goodness for the science that brought us masks and vaccines.

Incidentally, that three-point plan is a big part of my fall plan.

Anyway, this was the most people I’ve seen in a two-day span since the spring — and half of these folks were virtual! — we still take our precautions to heart.

But I know you’re really here for the weekly check on the cats. They are doing just fine. Phoebe is enjoying her mornings in the hall, where the sun lights things up nicely for her.

She enjoys being playing coy behind the spindles of the railing.

She also wants you to rub her belly through the spindles. If you’re nearby, that’s what you should be doing.

Poseidon spent the morning in the closet. It’s nice and warm there, too, and it’s a door we try to keep closed, so naturally he has to be in there at every opportunity, working on his Superman pose.

I don’t think we were supposed to see his Superman pose.

Now we’ve embarrassed him. Awkward photos are his kryptonite.

Finally! I’ve found a way to keep that cat in check!

And you? How was your weekend? How are your pets and friends and family?